


Night

by Allothi



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:12:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allothi/pseuds/Allothi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is tricky, but I'm warning for fear of death.
> 
> Huge, huge thanks to Jenn for beta reading.
> 
> Eames' reference is to a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, _The Nine Billion Names of God_ , from which this takes a certain inspiration.

The sun sets, painting the horizon with an ardency of pink that fades to a neon smudge and then, in a heartbeat -- you miss the exact point of its departure for a drifting thought and the sound of the waves -- it is gone. The horizon line is nothing more than a change in the quality of dark. The sky is littered with stars, the milky way an uncountable madness of lights, the moon full, huge, silent and perfect. Far, far below is the speck of a single figure.

The tide laps at the shore.

The figure is a man, mid thirties, laid out on his back on the beach. Close-up, by the moonlight, it is possible to make out his face, which seems robustly drawn, the lines pleasing, sure and clean, except where, perhaps, there is an almost hidden uncertainty about the angle of his jaw. His expression is relaxed and unguarded, as though it is inconceivable to him that he might be being watched. His eyes are open, roving idly over the sky and the darkness of scenery. His feet are bare, his shoes on the sand beside him.

He does not notice at first, but above him, one by one, the stars are going out.

 

We follow the man off the beach and up an empty cliff-top path, the sound of crickets loud and persistent as his frown, round the coastline until he reaches a single, isolated house at a place where the land juts out towards the sea. The ground floor windows are rejoicing in a glow of orange light, curtains closed, the upper floors all dark, curtains open. There are three cars parked outside, and the driveway itself becomes the one road in this place, leading inland through endless fields.

A security light winks on as the man approaches the front door. He turns his key in the lock and enters.

 

"Arthur!" the man says. He closes the door behind him. It _clunks_. "Arthur, you didn't work out the nine billionth name of god, did you?"

"What?" The answering voice -- Arthur -- is American and pitched low.

"Reference," says the man from the beach. "Never mind." He walks through the hall into a large, pale, well-lit kitchen, where Arthur is sat at the table, hunched over a sheaf of printouts, finger tapping the tip of his biro as he reads. He is dark-haired, lean and narrow-eyed, and exudes a straightforward kind of confidence.

"I think you should come outside for a moment," says our man.

"I don't--" Arthur looks up and cuts himself off, taking in something from our man's face, and as he does, his expression somehow comes to resemble our man's, a little more hollow, yet with a little more warmth. "Eames?" he says.

"Come outside," says Eames.

 

The two of them stand a little way outside their house, beyond the little pool of light lit up by the security light, until it abruptly dies. "Just look," says Eames. In the night sky, the moon looks more candid, more pock-marked, its radiance worn a little thin. There is less glitter from fewer stars. It takes looking for it to spot the Milky Way. One of the Pleiades perhaps shines for one millionth of a second far brighter, all its lambent millennia determined to go out in style, before it is gone. Arthur stares hard at the sky, as though he could will it back. Moments later, eyes tracing Delphinus, he loses the dolphin's tail.

"Something in the atmosphere?" he suggests.

"Do you really think so?" says Eames. His voice is quite light, very civilised, lots of veneer.

Arthur shrugs. "Could be."

"Oh, yes," says Eames. "Could be."

"We could, uh." Arthur makes a slow, slight, frustrated motion of the head, as if to rearrange his thoughts. "We could check, uh, the news."

Eames frowns.

"On the TV," Arthur says.

 

We go back inside. The lounge of the house is decorated in blues and greens, very unlike the kitchen, and is lit by tall lamps in two opposite corners, with the central light bulb, in a green and gold shade, switched off. The carpet looks soft and clean and new, the two large sofas comfortable and well-worn. There is a low coffee table in dark wood at the room's centre, empty but for a single hardback book and seven coasters decorated with impressionist prints. There is a set of nesting tables by the arm of one of the sofas, in the same shade of wood as the coffee table. There is a long radiator along one of the walls, stark and white. No television is visible.

Arthur enters, followed by Eames, who slouches down in one of the sofas and continues to frown. Arthur looks about him, hesitates, and touches the back of the sofa, near to where Eames sits.

"Television," Eames says.

"Right." Arthur goes to the wall, and opens up a cabinet to reveal a television screen. The remote control is on a neat shelf inset below; Arthur takes it up, presses the uppermost button, and the screen flashes immediately into life.

What it shows is hard to describe. There are colours, shapes and motion, and perhaps, in fact, if you could only find the right trick of sight -- if you could let your eyes relax and refocus in the exact right way, and if you could find the right distance, the right angle and state of mind -- you would see a clear picture; which, from the unfazed, receptive look of him, Arthur does appear to see. The sound, for you, is a familiar babble, the wrong side of what you can understand.

Arthur's expression narrows and he flips through channels, which causes a change -- in the shades of colour and something about the way the picture moves, and, very definitely, in the sound and what it seeks to express.

"Nothing," Arthur says, after perhaps thirty or forty channels. "Nothing at all."

Eames nods and sinks lower into his seat. The television screen flicks off and stares, large and dark. Arthur closes its doors. He leaves the room and walks down the hall and back outside, apparently to stare at the sky once again. We return to Eames, waiting in the lounge. He looks consumed with thought. A little time goes by before Arthur, too, returns.

"I think we should tell someone," Arthur says.

Eames takes out a mobile phone and lays it on the table. "No reception." He seems to know, without looking at the screen to check.

Arthur takes out his own phone. "Damn it. Same." He sets it on the coffee table and gives it a little push, so it slips along to join Eames'.

Eames turns his attention on Arthur. "So," he says, and stands up.

"So," says Arthur, as though conceding a point.

"We need to drive somewhere," says Eames, and Arthur stares at him and then slowly nods.

"Yeah," he says. He pauses. He seems to turn the idea over in his mind. "Yeah, that's right."

"We have three cars," Eames says, "after all."

But they do not immediately depart. Something hangs in the air, wanting to be said, to be a sound and an action as well as a thought. Eames shakes his head, goes to Arthur, halts, and then Arthur grips Eames' head and kisses him with rough energy that seems limned with a cold silveriness of fear. They draw back and kiss again briefly and familiarly. Whatever wanted to be said remains unsaid but is banished with stubborn, temporary force.

They go out to the sleekest and darkest of the cars, and Arthur produces keys from his pocket. The headlights glare into the increasing dark of the night. They set off.

 

There is a map book on the car's back seat, large and bright enough to be distinctly blue even in the dimness of the car's interior. Eames reaches round from his seat and takes it up whilst Arthur drives ahead down the one, straight, unlit road, which is wide and smooth, so that the only sound, besides the flick of the map pages under Eames' hands, is the soft like-silence of the car's smooth running. They pass by field after field of quiet, low-growing crops. Little is visible in the distance. The land descends from the cliff and becomes completely flat.

They go over a low bridge and Eames says, "Stop," and Arthur pulls over into a lay-by. He keeps the headlights on.

They both get out and Eames kneels at the bank of the wide stream they have passed over. He runs his hand through its waters, which shine a little with the light of the car. He takes off his shoes and socks, rolls his trousers up to his knees and wades in -- the water comes just above the thick roll the fabric. Arthur watches from the bank. The stars above are sparse, the cloudless sky now numinous and empty, deeply blank. The moon has faded to the dull colour of an old ten pence piece.

There is the splashing sound of Eames in the water. He has got down on his hands and knees, his trousers and much of his shirt now soaked, and is moving about, searching for something, feeling about him with his hands. Arthur, watching and unwatched by Eames, looks warmer and softer than we have yet seen him look.

Arthur approaches the bank. He squats down and touches the surface of the stream at its edge, swirls his fingers through the water, and then dips his hand further in and waves it back and forth. Eames looks up at him, catches his eye and grins.

"The water's lovely!"

Arthur shakes his head. "I bet."

Eames leans forwards and seems to look intently at something just below the surface. He splashes Arthur suddenly and with force, scooping up water for a second hit that gets Arthur directly in the face -- the first having hit his knees. He laughs and shakes as Arthur curses, and sits down where he has been kneeling and laughs some more, water up to his armpits and rippling about him.

Arthur growls and plunges towards him. They wrestle until they kiss, water everywhere, splashing and slapping noisily. Eames walks Arthur back to the bank and presses him down on his back into the grass, until Arthur flips him, their feet kicking up water in brief, sloshing waves. They breathe heavily and Eames' arms seem to tighten about Arthur's body. They rut against each other, only pausing to push themselves further back, fully onto the land. Arthur kicks of his shoes, which fall into the stream. He knocks his feet together and fails to remove his sopping socks. Water drips from the hems of his trousers, in loose rhythm with his movements.

The car lights are still on, with one door open, the inner light off and the windows dark. The sky above now contains eighty-seven stars. They are now too few for there to remain any constellations, although one, perhaps, by its placement, may once have been part of the Plough. It goes out.

The road stretches out, very straight, in both directions. The stream, bisected, is almost equally straight, so that between them they make a neat +. The bridge curves gently, old but neat and well-maintained.

Eames goes back to the car and sits sideways on the passenger seat, feet outside, seat getting wet. Arthur is kneeling in the stream, fishing for his shoes.

"No fish," Eames says, voice low but loud enough to be heard.

Arthur finds a shoe. He throws it back towards Eames and it lands somewhere between them.

"Or insects," Eames says, "or anything. Not that I could find."

"No," Arthur agrees. He searches about for his other shoe. Eventually, he finds it.

 

They switch sides of the car. Arthur's wet shoes and socks sit meekly on the back seat as Eames drives on, further and further inland. The car heating system is turned up high and roars quietly. Occasionally, the land rises or falls, although not by much.

Arthur squints at the map book in the darkness. He turns a page. "How long've we been going?"

The car has a clock, but it reads _14:24_ , the numbers innocently bright.

"No idea," Eames says. "Just driving, or overall?"

"Either."

"No idea."

 

They come to a field that looks as though it is filled with cows, their forms bulky and peaceful; Arthur steps barefoot into the night and a look passes through his eyes that might be comfort, or even relief. He hoists himself over the dry stone wall and walks to the nearest animal, which turns out to be not an animal at all, but a low, large standing stone. Eames leans his elbows on the wall from the other side and stares into the field. He disappears -- there is the particular click and hush of the car boot opening, and then a thunk as it closes again -- and reappears with a torch. He makes his way about, inspecting every form. They are all stones.

Arthur runs his fingers over the first he found, at the place where it might have had a face, if it had really been a cow. Still damp, he shivers -- perhaps the temperature has dropped.

They return to the car, and Eames says, "I suppose it's onwards, ever onwards," and waits as though he thinks Arthur might say, _no, let's go back_.

"Yeah," Arthur says. He gets in and closes his door.

Eames sits down behind the wheel. He checks the petrol gauge. The tank is still almost full. He closes his door. The car growls to life.

 

They come to a darkness that seems to swallow the road and the light of their headlights and all the fields, in a neat, flat wall of black, as far as they can make out in either direction, and that swallows equally the light of their torch when they shine it straight ahead. Eames reaches out with his hand and Arthur says, " _Stop._ "

Eames stops on the instant, fingers very near to the dark. He glances to where the road and the lights simply end, and he looks fearful but horribly drawn. It takes time before he lowers his arm.

"Yeah, all right."

"Let's find a stick," Arthur says, voice clipped and tense.

They don't find a stick, and so Arthur uses the map book instead, holding it out and feeding it centimetre by centimetre, up to half-way, into the darkness. He stops and holds it still, and then steps backwards. The map book now simply cuts off where it became unseen, with a sharply exact new edge. Eames wriggles his fingers.

Arthur, meanwhile, has turned his attention to the twin beams of the car's lights. "Do you think," he says, and shakes his head. He holds out the map book again, turned through ninety degrees, so that the very edge meets the dark. "Watch," he says.

Eames comes close and looks a question.

"I think it's moving," Arthur tells him. His arm, held straight, seems entirely motionless. He is extremely disciplined.

Eames shines the torch on the edge of the map book. "I suppose it would be," he says.

Both wait. A certain amount of time goes by. The dark gives no impression of motion, and yet, after a while, it has absorbed the edge of the remains of the book.

"All right, yeah, that's--" Eames says.

"Yeah," says Arthur, voice tighter and tenser than ever.

They return to the car at speed, and it screams as it turns and races onward and onward, past the field of stones and over the bridge over the stream, down that wide, unbending road, beneath the last three stars in the sky. Two are quite close, high in the west, one with twice the brightness of its sibling. The other stands near the summit of the sky and is brighter again. The moon is a dull slate grey.

A total silence falls when the car stops, at the end of the road, at the cliff, until one car door opens, and then the other. Arthur now has the torch and he adds its lights to the car's, shining it up and down, left and right over the space where he left his house. He walks into the space and walks around. Eames leans back against the car.

Arthur says, " _Shit_."

Eames happens to look up as the last star winks out and the moon shades itself away.

 

They head for the beach, on foot. They leave the car engine running, the lights pointing out to sea, but when, some time later, they look back, nothing is visible.

"We could go back to check," says Eames. "Might just be--" He gestures vaguely. "Or not."

"Not," says Arthur.

"D'you think it matters?"

"Let's keep going." And they do.

 

The tide has come in, and the sea is lapping at the grass. Arthur shines the torch around, but its light is too weak to tell how much closer the true darkness may have come, or what is just _dark_ that is normal and lightable. He shines the torch up at the sky, which is as black as every other direction. The sea _shushes_ at him.

"Suppose there's anything beyond it?" Eames says.

"No."

"No." Eames laughs. "Me neither." He adds, with jagged abruptness, "I'm glad I'm with you."

Arthur nods, but Eames is staring ahead, away from him.

"I'm glad I'm with you," Eames says again, now rehearsed, expressive and certain. "Arthur," he says.

"I know." And Arthur goes close to him.

It is a while before they kiss, and when they do, they do it slowly, as though testing new ground, touching like this for a new first time. Arthur clutches the torch awkwardly against Eames' back, lighting up the back of Eames' neck and skull. They grow easier together -- they seem headily intimate. Arthur mutters something close to Eames' ear, and Eames kisses Arthur's mouth repeatedly.

The tide keeps coming in, and we sense, though cannot see, that the darkness is approaching. Arthur keeps hold of the torch. At times it shakes. The sea reaches our two, and they go further inland, but not very far. The darkness comes close.

Eventually, our one light goes out.


End file.
